Spain stay top of FIFA rankings

(Reuters) - Spain stayed top of the FIFA rankings on Wednesday as the 10 top places remained unchanged, while Afghanistan reached their highest-ever position.

Afghanistan’s 1-0 win over Sri Lanka in one of only a handful of internationals played in the last month was enough to lift them to 164th.

Afghanistan have won three matches this year -- the other two were against tiny Bhutan -- to double their number of victories since they started playing international football in 1948.

At the top, Netherlands are second behind world and European champions Spain with Brazil third, Germany fourth and Argentina fifth.

Ghana (15th) are Africa’s highest-ranked team while Japan (14th) are the top Asian side.

Six teams share 202nd and last place -- Andorra, San Marino, Anguilla, Montserrat, American Samoa and Papua New Guinea.

Rankings (last month’s positions in brackets)

1. (1) Spain

2. (2) Netherlands

3. (3) Brazil

4. (4) Germany

5. (5) Argentina

6. (6) England

7. (7) Uruguay

8. (8) Portugal

9. (9) Italy

10.(10) Croatia

Africa has record entry for 2014 World Cup

(Reuters) - Africa has a record entry for the 2014 World Cup finals and the qualification process will begin before the end of the year, the Confederation of African Football said on Tuesday.

Only Mauritania has failed to enter from Africa’s 53 member countries, who will battle for the five places reserved for the continent at the tournament in Brazil.

For the first time in more than two decades, knockout matches will be used to determine the five African finalists, adding a more dramatic finish to the qualifying process towards the end of 2013.

There will be three stages of preliminaries in the African zone, CAF said after a meeting of its executive committee in Cairo.

The 24 bottom-ranked teams will play off against each other in 12 two-legged ties in November, immediately reducing the number of teams in the preliminary process.

The 40 remaining countries will then be divided into 10 groups for matches from June 2012 to September 2013.

The 10 group winners go on to compete in the final playoffs, five two-legged ties which will determine who qualifies for Brazil.

The announcement of Africa’s preliminary process for the 2014 finals follows on similar announcements from Asia, CONCACAF and Europe in recent months.

World Cup qualifying gets underway in the Caribbean on June 3, more than a month before the World Cup draw is conducted in Rio de Janeiro on July 30.

Asia has already held a qualifying draw for the early stages of its preliminaries, which get underway on June 29.